Kmart Wants To Tape Your Video Game Reviews To Display Cases

Non-gamers who cruise video game aisles looking for gifts are bewildered at the strange sights from the lineup of game boxes. Kmart is asking gamers to help out those customers by submitting user reviews that they’ll post near games in the store.

Yes, they sell the Amazing Atari 2600 and I saw a display the other day announcing the new Atari 7800 coming out later this year. My friend, “Clock 13″, is going to try to hide one for me so I won’t have to wait in line.

That doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. I know I’ve kept from buying a new game that’s caught my eye because I haven’t read any reviews on it yet. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on games, so I have to be selective about what I buy, and I’m not going to shell out $50 unless I know it’s worth my time.

On the one hand, you don’t know who’s writing the reviews. Someone may just really love a game that sucks. But if they put up multiple reviews for a game, at least you can get an idea of what it’s worth.

“Helpful and constructive. (Don’t tell anyone that Wii Music blows. We might be able to sucker people into buying it).”

Seriously? Asking reviewers to be helpful and constructive automatically equals trying to sucker people into buying a game? What exactly is the problem with KMart posting guidelines for their reviews? They’re simply saying that they will not post reviews that do not follow the guidelines. Consumerist does the exact same thing by disemvoweling comments that do not follow the Consumerist guidelines. I don’t see anything wrong with either KMart soliciting reviews or posting guidelines for the reviews.

People like to write and post their opinions. Have you noticed that? I thought so, given what we’re all doing here.

The issue is not that. The issue is not even the idea of making user reviews available to b&m shoppers who don’t have smartphones.

The issue is that K-Mart can (and no doubt fully plans to) cherry-pick the reviews in order to post only those most useful as advertising. And to do so without compensating the writers, which is, if not downright unethical, certainly sleazy.

The tradition of “customer testimonials” in advertising is time-honored. But there’s usually some compensation involved. I once wrote an unsolicited letter to a turntable manufacturer praising the performance of their product. They extracted a phrase to use in an advertising brochure — but asked my permission before using it, and comped me a pair of their best loudspeakers.

>>>The issue is that K-Mart can (and no doubt fully plans to) cherry-pick the reviews in order to post only those most useful as advertising.

You seem surprised that a company would want to put its best foot forward in terms of advertising. Besides, most places that solicit on-line reviews have some sort of basic standards for reviews and a mechanism for getting rid of those reviews that don’t meet the standards. This is nothing new (see Amazon’s reviews) and that’s all that K-Mart has said about its reviews. K-Mart hasn’t said anything about only posting favorable reviews. In fact, you can provide low star ratings, so it’s only logical that one could submit an unfavorable review as well.

>>>And to do so without compensating the writers, which is, if not downright unethical, certainly sleazy.

Crowd-sourced reviews are ubiquitous. Have you seen Amazon’s reviews? Newegg? Tripadvisor? Chowhound? etc. Where’s the compensation for those reviews? Are those unethical or sleazy? Lots of people love to review (you even said so yourself). Lots of people just love to have their voice heard. Sometimes that love is enough for a reviewer. That’s the compensation.

In theory this is a good idea but I can’t imagine them putting up anything giving a game a bad review, even if it is constructive criticism. If a shopper sees something saying this game is not that great then K-Mart wont be selling many copies of that game. I don’t believe K-Mart wants to help me, just get me to spend more. I am sure only good reviews will be posted.

I could see them posting ones w/ ‘This game is/is not for kids’, ‘is/is not easy’, ‘is/is not long’, etc. You could answer either way and still let Grandma know not to buy Nintendogz for her 17 year old grandson that plays games all day and wants to blow up the aliens with friends.

Or they could, you know, hire staff people for electronics / gaming who might know what they’re talking about and can discuss things with customers.

HA! I kid.

(When I worked for GameStop I was a VERY popular salesperson with most of the mothers and grandmothers, because I was a non-threatening female employee who guided them through the process without, usually, being condescending to them. And all of us there were able to give at least a cursory game summary about most titles to most customers.)

Kind of angry translations, huh? Whether or not this truly helps the customers or not, I don’t see any way this would hurt them.

And “Talk to our shoppers like the morons they are” is a little harsh, gamers may want to mention the Frames per second (FPS) or what kind of graphics engine the game uses, but that’s going to confuse a lot of people, including people who play games a lot, but aren’t “hardcore gamers.”

I would like to see any store with a sign that warns Grandmothers not to get certain games/CDs/Movies for their grandchildren, and I’m sure in all our lives we’ve gotten gifts soley because a relative thought it was that “popular robot movie” etc.

I’m going to guess that these reviews will be similiar to the employee reviews that are posted in book stores. Sure, the back of the book may tell you a little bit about the book – but having someone suggest it and add a little more information.

Obviously, these reviews will be more helpful to parents and people who are just browsing and might be thinking about purchasing a game. Not so much for “gamers” who buy their games elsewhere anyway.